Echoes, I don't know if this is what you mean or just how I read your post, but today I was out with one of my twin daughters, aged 14. I took her out to eat as a thank you for her giving up her bedroom for my visiting friend.

I was feeling very consious of the "connection", that feeling where you "fit". I mentioned to my daughter about my friend staying and said no matter how much of a nice lady she was, there's nothing like that feeling you have between "blood" relatives.

No don't get me wrong, I know theres lots of dysfuntion between blood relatives, but what I'm talking about here is the healthy relating "to". I was missing that feeling with my friend, I was trying to find that connection, that missing piece, and nothing I could say or do or her say or do, could we bridge that connection.

Being adopted I think a lot of my anger/rage comes from also unconsouisly missing that connection I had with my birth mother in the womb. My adoptive mother maybe could have helped bridge the gap a whole lot better than she did, but she never, ever would have been that perfect connection.

Theres' that unspoken comfortableness with family. Funtional family connections I'm talking about here. But I'd not noticed it before, was so used to not "fitting" that it became a case of trying to get "it" from "whomever" not allowing myself to see it right here in front of me, with my family today. Maybe because it means I finally understsand what my mourning has been about all my life. What I actually did loose with adoption.

I think with our T's we are looking for that connection and it will never be like that perfect connection, but whilst in the session with them, we can somehow blind ourselfs to that fact, but once out of the session, we become very aware once again of the "gap". Its mourning this gap I need to do.

I've put as much into friendships as my family, I think because I've been so split of from allowing myself to feel the connection with my family for fear of loosing it again that I've almost tried to fool myself into making it not matter, not matter as much as friendships because friendships can't hurt me as much as loosing family.

I've often told my T that I feel as if theres a blind part that I won't look at. I think its allowing myself to fully immerse in that perfect connection I have today wiht my family. My old tapes are telling me that I will loose it, like I lost it in the very begining of my life, so I've never allowed myself to have it.

I think I'm about to reach a place where its safe to allow myself to accept the limitations of my relationship with T, because I am finally letting in the real relationships, my children, its safe to let them in.

Its a warm feeling, a feeling where everything makes sense. Where all fight and struggle to feel as if we belong ends. Part of me knew this was missing, getting angry at T because I wanted her to be "THAT" one, but she isn't, that one is a natural/spritual connection that comes through actually belonging to that person. We may not be able to choose our familys or even like them, but nature has made it that we feel at our most secure when its right. Maybe thats why when it goes wrong, its so bad??

Anyways this is what your post brought up for me.

((Echoes))